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rambunctious/rumbunctious/rumbustious/robustious

These 4 words all mean the same thing and presumably descended with modification from a common ancestor. Which came first?

The online dictionaries are vague, but at least one ( http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rumbustious) suggests that ‘robustious’ was the original and that ‘rumbustious’ is a corruption of it. And if you see ‘rumble’ or ‘rum’ (meaning weird or strange) within ‘rumbustious,’ it’s a plausible eggcorn gone mainstream.

Re: rambunctious/rumbunctious/rumbustious/robustious

Great self-referential word history. Thinking about it, there may be a vast field of variants of rambunctious. Here is an interesting one. They are rambunches; he is rambunch. Might be mostly misspellings, though.